Melbourne 1956: Olympic Park

The Olympic Park forms part of Melbourne’s Sports and Entertainment Precinct, which is home to a number of world-class sports stadiums and venues, which have made the city Australia’s sporting capital. They include the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Melbourne Park, where the Australian Open tennis tournament is played.

Melbourne Rectangular Stadium is the biggest of the Olympic Park’s own sports facilities which opened in 2010. This 30,500-capacity venue is the home ground of Melbourne Storm, the city’s rugby league team; the rugby union team Melbourne Force; and two professional soccer clubs: Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City. The stadium welcomed Elton John and Queen for concerts in 2019. The park’s other sporting venues are the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre, the Olympic Park Oval (both of which are used by Australian rules football team Collingwood), and a public playing field known as Gosch’s Paddock.

Easily accessible to the city’s residents thanks to the pedestrian bridges, rail stations, trams, roads and river jetty that serve the precinct, the Olympic Park is also a popular recreational venue. In 2019, it staged 810 publicly accessible community activities, including family days and charity fun-runs. Total income from the precinct’s operations as a whole in the 2019/20 period was AUD 99 million, a drop of AUD 23.6 million on the previous year. This fall was mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the cancellation of several events.

Situated between the Yarra River and Melbourne Park, the Olympic Park has a long history as a sporting and recreational area, one that dates to 1860. It was used for athletics, cycling, football, tennis, rugby union and women’s cricket in its first few decades of existence, and a motordrome was built there in the 1920s. The park was eventually redeveloped for the Olympic Games Melbourne 1956 and was the location for the Swimming Stadium (the venue for the swimming, diving and water polo events), the Olympic Park Stadium (football and field hockey) and the Olympic Velodrome (cycling). Now known as the Holden Centre, the Swimming Stadium still stands, while the other three venues have been replaced by new facilities.

In the 1960s, the Olympic Park Stadium attracted some 900,000 people a year for athletics meets and football matches. It hosted the 2001 IAAF Grand Prix final and the Melbourne Track Classic, which was granted World Athletics Grand Prix status. The stadium was demolished in 2011 to make way for the Olympic Park Oval, a training ground used by Australian rules football team Collingwood and a public sport and recreation facility.

The Velodrome hosted cycling events through to the mid-1960s but was later under-used as it did not meet the requirements for hosting competitions. It was demolished in 1973, and the Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre and a car park were built on the site. The Hockey Field was used for greyhound racing and track and field events after the Olympic Games. It was later redeveloped as a training facility for the Collingwood club and is now the site of the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.